


SkaiaWatch

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: (will probably be moreso in later chapters), Emetophobia, Eye Trauma, F/F, Grimdark, Humanstuck, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 18:50:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11515320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "Haha think Overwatch-esque AU where it's the future and there's a lot of colorful gadgets and robots and people with a bunch of tech and abilities these guys all used to be part of Overwatch and the for of them have some weird intertwining history with each other.Or if you don't know overwatch think colorful sci fiMaybe that they used to be tight but a buncha shit hit the fan and oh no!Like think wild n zany! Totally out there character backstories! Rivalries and grudging respect! Old sad memories! Angst! And continuing romances?!"





	SkaiaWatch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GlassesBlu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlassesBlu/gifts).



> I have definitely super never played Overwatch but I've gotten super committed to whatever the hell this is and I hope you like it!  
> (Also I definitely overtagged for violence there's nothing explicit)

Naica, Mexico.  The City of Crystal.  Set in the middle of the country, separated from the open ocean by the Gulf of California and the Baja Peninsula, it was still the starting point for one of the fastest sub-Pacific transit system that departed from North America.  The discovery of octet-fluorite in the late 2050s had made it a hub of both transportation and trade, building it upwards and out from a small mining town to the commercial hub of the state of Chihuahua over the span of a couple of decades.   
  
Chalchiuhtlicue knew it better as ‘home’.  
Nearly a thousand feet below sea level, entombed in a bed of limestone, she mused that the circumstances of her return could have been a little bit more welcoming.   
  
“Chichi!  We’re coming in hot!”  
  
“Ha, ha.  I see you’re humorously bastardizing my pseudonym again to deliver a line from one of your vintage movies, solidifying our heroic antics as intrepid and cinematic.”  
  
“No! I mean literally.  Literally hot.  The air behind this last layer of stone is upwards of a hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
Chalchiuhtlicue—or Chichi—touched two fingers to the startlingly jade mark on her forearm, and the water swirling around her hand splashed to the ground unceremoniously.  The gaping hole she’d opened in the limestone with her impromptu hydraulic drill was approximately her height, and an inch shy in depth from breaching to the inner cavern.  She sucked in a lungful of damp air between her teeth, and exhaled.  
  
“Well.”  Chichi said unenthusiastically, casting a glance back over her shoulder towards the way they’d come.  The pair of them had only drilled a few feet from the subterranean transit lobby, since the doorway to the rails themselves had been rendered inaccessible after a cave-in; something recent, Chichi had speculated, since the local authorities hadn’t warned them when they initially contacted them for aid several days prior.   
  
“Well.” Her companion agreed, flattening out and elbowing her way in between Chalchiulicue and the cave wall to get a better look at the almost-door.  Chichi pressed back out of her way the best she could; truthfully, she found something about the way the other woman examined the rock a little unnerving, knowing she couldn’t see it.  Imugi mapped the world with heat sensors rather than her eyes, but she tilted her head pensively as if trying to prove otherwise.  “Yep!  The inner climate control mechanisms are definitely busted.  Wonder if that has anything to do with the breakdown.” She turned sharply on her heel, and Chichi averted her eyes on instinct.  Staring directly into the twin-set gems of Imugi’s mask for too long would strike anyone blind.  
  
“I suppose?”  Chichi wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, more than vaguely disgusted at the sticky feeling of humidity, like a second layer of skin.  “I find it hard to believe SkaiaWatch would be contacted over a maintenance issue.  We aren’t international civil engineers.”  There was a pregnant pause as she carefully weighed her next words.  “From the way the authorities described the incident, they were fairly certain it might have been the work of…” She trailed off, fussing with a golden bangle on her wrist.  
  
Imugi shrugged, helpfully.  “I know.  It’s either them or it isn’t.  Either way, in that kind of heat you’re not going to be able to stay lucid longer than what, ten minutes?  Five?  Shake your skirt back a few yards, Chal!  I’ve got this one.”  
  
Chichi touched her tattoo again, and the water at their feet responded to a subtle flick of her wrist, collecting again and revolving slowly around her forearm.  “If I recall correctly, you yourself said you had not yet seen an end to your search for your mother’s completed suit, are you equipped for that level of thermoregulation?”  
  
“Just bust it open, I’ll poke my head around.  You need to go back and see if there’s anything we missed.”  
  
The water followed some silent command; she twisted her fingers in a short, circular motion, as if she was unscrewing an invisible lid—the limestone was already cracking under the force of earlier drilling, and she made short work of the final inch.  The dense, hot air immediately began to pour through the newly opened passage, and Chichi physically recoiled.  “I anticipate your return in no more than ten minutes, at which time I’ll be forced to accept the Dragon of Seoul has been made into a festive and outrageously expensive handbag by whatever specters haunt these hallowed rails.”  
  
Imugi’s grin contrasted neatly against the fact that the air was about as breathable as broth, and Chichi didn’t linger long as she hurried back out the passageway.   
  
The Naica Subway Station was a marvel.  It was nicknamed the Queen’s Eye, after one of the caves discovered near the turn of the century when it was still used as a lead mine.  Instead of modernizing it all, the government of Mexico decided to emphasize its natural beauty.  Much of the limestone was left exposed, though greatly reinforced, and while the caverns needed to be carved apart and reshaped to allow the installment of the rail system and foot traffic in the lobby, some of the giant selenite spires were preserved and crossed over the high ceiling like timber beams—others were carved into benches.  The entire ticket hub was pure crystal.   
  
The outer climate control mechanisms seemed to be holding steady, though Chalchiuhtlicue wasn’t sure how long it could fight against the flood of 140 degrees and 90% humidity from the inner station.  They were the kinds of conditions that led to the octet-fluorite—an incredibly potent but compact source of crystalline power that had yet to be successfully synthesized—laying undiscovered within the old lead mine until Chichi was well into middle school.  The rapid twenty-year development left Naica nearly unrecognizable.  The vast majority of selenite in the old mine needed to be removed to clear the way for the station, and much of it was preserved using modern techniques and used for building structures above-ground, giving Naica its new name—the City of Crystal.   
  
The station had been empty for days.  The longest time it had been shut down in years.  Without the swarms of people, the high ceilings and semi-translucent rock didn’t do much to mask the fact they were a thousand feet underground.  It felt like a luxurious tomb.  
  
Chichi tried not to think about it as she walked the length of the station to the maintenance wing.  
  
It was the one place she and Imugi hadn’t checked, yet; the authorities who got in contact with SkaiaWatch had said the issue had been with the rails themselves, and that the inner mechanisms of the station—including the octet-fluorite that propelled the subway across the Pacific instead of electricity—had been perfectly in-tact when they made the evacuation and sealed the whole thing off until SkaiaWatch’s arrival.   In fact, everything had been working _startlingly_ well, considering the fact the entire line had come to a slow halt mere yards from the station itself.  In the first fifteen, twenty minutes following the incident, the issue was thought to be strictly mechanical.  Then the shadows began seeping from beneath the railcars.  
  
Then several passengers began to vomit seawater.  
  
The maintenance wing was clearly marked, and Chichi swiped the electronic pass she’d been given when their plane touched down just outside Naica.  To her surprise, it didn’t beep—she swiped again.  A third time.  Then she tried the door, and realized it had been unlocked the entire time.   
  
Hm.  Crap.  
  
A corridor took her to a room at the end—the other turnoffs in the wing didn’t interest her as much, she wanted to go down below.  Through the last room there was a ladder that descended further into the limestone.  The metal rungs were warm to her touch.   Not as hot as the inner station, but nearly as humid, her descent felt like lowering herself into a lukewarm puddle.  When her feet touched solid ground, she brushed short, coarse bangs out of her face, dampened by the surrounding air.  
  
It was silent without the hum of the overhead machinery, and it was twice as dark as it was quiet.  In the absence of light, Chichi’s tattoos glowed faintly, mapping jade lines and swirls from the seat of her palms up the bare planes to her shoulders. They only offered a couple of feet of visibility, though, and she extended a palm, trying to get a better sense of where she was headed.  Hell, she wasn’t even sure what she was looking for—she just wondered if there had been a cave-in since the station was evacuated and sealed, maybe the octet-fluorite wasn’t as secure as they’d been told.  
  
That train of thought was brutally eviscerated and hung out to dry when all she could see was blue.  
  
It was a crackle of energy—four feet in front of her or fourteen, she couldn’t tell—but bright enough everything went a brilliant hue and then resoundingly black as her pupils contracted in the sudden light and its equally sudden absence.  She didn’t have time to adjust when the sound of footsteps slapping against the stone floor had her acting on reflex, arm lashing out to her side to effectively clothesline a figure to her immediate left.   
  
There was sharp swearing as whoever it was hit the ground—there was a moment, but no longer than that, where Chichi had a window of opportunity to react.  She didn’t.   
  
She recognized the voice.  
  
“God _damn_ ,” it said.  Then: “Sorry, babe.” It didn’t sound much apologetic at all.  Vriska Serket, known in most circles as the _Marquise_ , audibly scrambled to her feet.  “Better luck next time, Maryam!”  
  
For the second time in as many minutes, Kanaya’s word went cerulean.  
  
…  
  
…  
  
She couldn’t have been out for long.  Less than a handful of minutes of lost time, but the wall had stopped her propel backwards, and the wall didn’t do it out of kindness.  Kanaya ( _known in most circles as Chalchiuhtlicue_ ) noted dully that her torso ached from the blow—Vriska must have hit her square in the chest to send her back that far, but she didn’t have that kind of raw power, not even with her cybernetic arm.  
  
…Not unless she’d gotten an upgrade.  The octet-fluorite.  Powerful enough to send several hundred people barreling under the Pacific Ocean in a miraculous five hours, more than powerful enough to indefinitely boost a robot limb.  And whatever else Vriska was of half a mind to use it for.  And wherever Vriska was, for better or for worse, she had an accomplice.   
  
Chichi groaned softly as she rubbed her sore sternum with the heel of her hand, casting her gaze upwards towards the unseen shadowy ceiling above.  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, she had such a type.   
  
—Oh.  Oh God.  Where was Imugi? 

 

* * *

  
  
  
“I anticipate your return in no more than ten minutes, at which time I’ll be forced to accept the Dragon of Seoul has been made into a festive and outrageously expensive handbag by whatever specters haunt these hallowed rails.”  
  
Imugi beamed at her, all teeth, but said nothing—Chichi’s body temperature signature retreated into the cave, until she vanished behind a wall of limestone, back into the lobby.  The suit, which both sensed and regulated heat, kept a bit of the oppressive elements at bay—she could feel some of it, especially against the exposed skin between her neckline and mask.  Chichi was right, though.  It was incomplete.  In Korean tradition, imugis are proto-dragons, a fitting enough name for one who hadn’t inherited the full title.  
  
All the more reason to square her shoulders back and get into the fuckin’ subway station, then.  
  
The first thing that struck her was the rapid drop in temperature around her feet—there was a short drop-off from the tunnel they’d dug (unsurprising, since it was an inexact science) to the tracks of the subway, and for whatever reason, the oppressive layer of heat cut off somewhere at--  
  
Imugi dipped her foot in and found water just beneath where she was standing. She slid off her perch until she was ankle deep—it didn’t make much sense; in this heat, any water, especially that shallow, ought to be burning.  She bent and dragged her fingertips through the unexpected kiss of the cold.  When she brought her fingers to her lips, she tasted salt.  That was almost all she needed to turn back immediately.   
  
Curiosity and a sense of duty to teammates present and past kept her moving through the water.  The air and the outside of the railcars had gotten too uniformly hot for her to sense many distinct shapes, but she was able to latch on to a ladder on the outside of the railcar closest to her.  Hand over foot, she climbed, until she was standing atop one of the fastest subways in the world—which… wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.  
  
She cupped two hands around her mouth.  
  
“Rose?  Earth to Rose Lalonde!  I could sniff out your depressingly oceanic shtick a mile off, why don’t you temporarily renounce your mysterious nautical ways and we can discuss this like adults?”  Imugi’s voice reverberated off the cave walls several seconds after she paused for a reply.  “Come on, we both know Lovecraft was a racist fraud.”   
  
Still nothing.  
  
“—Rose, please.  I know—you did—you’re _doing_ what you think you have to do to stop him, but Chi—Kanaya was right.  This is suicidal, you have to come back.  She misses you both.  I miss—“  
  
She barely ducked to avoid a tendril of shadow that nearly took her off her feet and into the water, identifiable only by its total absence of warmth.  It seemed to suck out the heat from the air immediately around it.  Rose, apparently, was not in the mood for banter.  
  
Imugi took off running.  
  
She didn’t know where she was going, but she did know she had just pissed off a girl who had traded her autonomy away for something bare degrees from minor godhood, and when that was what you were dealing with, it wasn’t the _destination,_ it was the _journey_ —far in the opposite direction.  Her feet pounded against the tops of the railcars, each step sharp against the metal and then hollow as it was repeated back to her by the walls of the cave.  Imugi jumped to clear a gap between railcars, nearly losing her footing when she hit the landing, but she was fast enough that her momentum carried her forward anyway.  
  
Trouble is, she couldn’t outrun the shadows; not when they were omnipresent in the periphery of her senses, strikingly cold on the very edges of unbearable heat.  
  
Trouble is, she could outrun her own lungs.  The heat was catching up to her faster than Rose Lalonde was.  
  
Her chest was rising and falling without taking any air in.  Her mind began to swim.  She felt like she was running sideways as everything tilted lazily on its axis.   
  
All it took was a misstep, sloppy, sloppy, sloppy—  
  
Her side slammed into the top of the subway, and she was unconscious before she hit the water.  
  
Minutes—hours—days later, she heard her name.  
  
“Terezi?  Oh God—”


End file.
